Report: 'Misha' denies any link to Boston bomb plot

Apr. 29, 2013
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Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a promising boxer. / Julia Malakie, AP

by Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY

by Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY

The once mysterious "Misha," dubbed by an uncle of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a major radicalizing influence on his nephew, tells The New York Review of Books that he was not Tamerlan's Islamic teacher, had no connection to the bomb plot and hadn't seen him in three years.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a police operation that left his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, seriously wounded. Dzhokhar has been charged in connection with the bombing, which left three dead and more than 260 injured. He is being held in a prison medical center in Massachusetts.

Christian Caryl, a contributor to the Review, writes that he tracked down "Misha," whose real name is Mikhail Allakhverdov, in a lower middle-class neighborhood in Rhode Island.

Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the bombing suspects, has alleged that "Misha" -- beginning in 2009 -- was a major factor in radicalizing Tamerlan, who gave up boxing and drinking for Islam.

"This person just took his brain," Tsarni told CNN. "He just brainwashed him completely."

Allakhverdov, an Armenian Ukrainian who converted to Islam, flatly denies the charge.

"I wasn't his teacher," he tells Caryl. "If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this."

Allakhverdov, 39, says he has had no contact with Tamerlan since he moved from Cambridge three years ago.

He also says that he has been cooperating fully with the FBI, and turned over his computer, phone and other materials "to show I haven't done anything."

He says the FBI is about to return the items and that the agents tell him "they are about to close the case."

Caryl, who is writing an upcoming article for the Review on the Tsarnaev family and the Chechen and Russian community in Boston, writes that while the FBI declined to comment on the case, Allakhverdov's statements seem to bear out reports that the FBI has found no connection between "Misha" and the bomb plot.